The Nightmare (2015)

the audience applauded

recommended

People are voting emotionally.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Director Rodney Ascher created this film about eight people who suffer from sleep paralysis. It recreates their nightmares and examines their difficulties with a healthy dose of nightmarish movie clips. This movie is stuck in between. It's not strictly a documentary. The characters are played by regular-looking actors. With the recreations, this tries to look like a documentary but is never convincing as such. On the other end, this movie has no plot. It has no narrative. It has no thrills. It's just a series of recreations. I would rather have a straight-forward documentary or a found-footage horror. This is somewhere in the middle where nothing really works.

The only reason I'm offering a 2 rating is because of the time taken to make this doc feel like a horror flick. I have suffered from actual sleep paralysis for over 15 years. There is no demonic hold or parallel universe like creatures it's just literal paralysis from your motor functions while being completely conscience. Yes it creates anxiety, yes it's scary as all hell, yes you wish you could wake up from it, yes it literally takes every ounce of strength you can muster up in order to literally just lift your finger. It's absolutely terrifying because your heart rate increases and anxiety level sky rockets but you can't control your breathing so it feels like you're going to suffocate. This documentary took a science fiction spin on something that I have been unable to clinically explain since I was a teenager. I was expecting more and excited to sit down and watch this "documentary" and now I'm actually a little upset that this real life diagnosis is being portrayed as a science fiction movie.

There's nothing informative or scientific in this so called "documentary". To sum up, there are demons out there trying to suck the soul out of you and the only way out is to turn to Jesus. Oh, yeah and it appears to be transmitting as an STD, pretty contagious, so beware! It's fake, scripted and they could have at least try and find more believable actors.Nothing more than Christian propaganda trying to attract more followers through spreading fear and disinformation due to it's declining influence in the recent years. If you are looking for reasonable explanations and real stories, do not waste your time.This is just laughable.Not to mention how insulting it is to medical profession and science in general.I wish i could have rated it with - 10.

The Nightmare follows eight people from around the world that are interviewed for questions on sleep paralysis. That, is what this documentary is. The Nightmare is a unique and eccentric horror/documentary that just creeps under your skin and can really make you shiver. The movie follows each of these people and from each one we are given a perception by the interviewee and how he/she has experienced sleep paralysis. This movie does exceedingly well in recreating the dreams and moments of paralysis as it's just incredibly creepy and freaky. I think the most notable part of this film if anything is in all the way it's been obligated and produced to provide great amounts of scary themes. It just works. And on top of that, the sleep paralysis topic is just great. It's so interesting to learn about something that only so many people will experience as sleep paralysis is barely touched on. But if you're looking for a strong and good documentary as well as a horror movie; The Nightmare gets the job done.